Enez

France, 2022, 42' 

The Île de Sein is located 8 km from the Breton peninsula in north-western France. It is a place suspended in the space of the sea and the time of humankind’s history. The film director, Emmanuel Piton, hails from this island; his ancestors lived there for decades before returning to the mainland. So, he goes after those ancient presences, forgotten and yet still present, through the impressionistic poetry of his images, captivated in his own way like a tourist, and reflexive as a writer in search of expression. The arid land of the island, its evocative landscapes, its mighty waters, the haze of the early morning, the bleached daylight, the darkness of the evening: everything in Enez conveys the foggy, magically mysterious atmosphere of an excluded, unique, at times frightening land. Piton observes the Île de Sein as if it were a secluded space, revealing its memory: his shots are like calibrated words printed on paper; his fragile, minimal cinema like the expression of some equally faraway materiality waiting for the day in which the island is literally submerged by the waters that now surround it.